From the House of Mars Everyday I go out into the world to work or play and every night I come home to the House of Mars to make sense of it all

Archive for July 2014

Summertime and the living is easy. Fish are jumping and the cotton is high.

This song spoke to me when I was a child. It was the epitome of long lazy days made expressly for play. Summers seemed to last longer when there was nothing to do but go out and play from morning to night. When did they start to fly by in the wink of an eye? I’m on a mission this summer – to try to make this summer go as slowly as it can. I switch radio stations in the car if I hear the words Back to School. I grab the remote when I hear the word football coming from the TV. I delete e-mailed ads that mention Fall Fashions or Back to School.

Just the thought of winter sends shudders through my soul. You see, I’m chilly when the temperature dips south of 75 . I am that one person in the world who actually loves, yes loves heat and humidity. So if you ever run into me on one of my kind of days do not, I repeat do not, make the mistake of complaining about either the h or the h. If you do, you’ll hear me growl “Would you prefer the polar vortex?

So how am I making my summer last? By handing it over to my senses.

Sometimes hearing gets there first. My ears are early risers. Some mornings, I haven’t even opened my eyes when my ears are already on the job, trying to decipher the calls of the birds who compete to fill the air with their own particular calls. There are chitterers and tritterers, the chatterers, trillers and squawkers. There’s even a Yankee fan bird who calls Jeter, Jeter, Jeter.

Some days touch steps up to bat. I step outside and my skin actually sings for joy as the warmth bathes it

Sight’s been putting in duty since early spring, pointing out the first crocus brave enough to break through the frigid soil next to my front walk. Sight also distracted my driving each April morning, showing me the first leaf buds on the skeletal trees, and keeping track each morning as they unfurled and grew into fragile green miracles. Anticipating the summer to come, I’d always call out the window. “Welcome to the world, little ones.”

As for taste. Coffee never tastes as good as it does when I take that first sip of coffee out on the deck in the fresh calm of a weekend morning.

Unfortunately I have no time for coffee al fresco Monday through Friday, but thankfully I work in an office complex with lots of outdoor spots to satisfy my senses.

There’s the bench where I take a five-minute nonsmoker’s break mid-morning.

Where I walk at lunchtime

And what’s lunchtime without a place to eat lunch.

That’s my secret for slowing down summer. It’s like John Lennon said.

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round. I just love to watch them turn.

One of my nieces is a prosecutor and it appears that she developed an eye for inconsistent statements early.

My mother had a way of calling the refrigerator an ice box, as did many of her generation. When she did, Niece J would very politely remind her “Grandma, you don’t have an icebox.”

When the phone rang in the middle of dinner preparations, my mother would turn down the burners before padding into the living room, a la Edith Bunker, calling “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Niece J would shake her head, and gently say”Grandma, they can’t hear you.”

I wonder what Niece J would say about her Aunt V last Sunday.

I took a giant step toward the 21st Century and got a router so I can set up a wireless network in The House of Mars. Network? Ha! It’s a network of one device, my laptop. I still don’t have a smartphone or tablet, but I’m looking forward to checking my email, or writing blog posts from out on the deck.

Thanks to Rudy Router, this post is the first to come to you “cable-less.”

I had no problem setting up the router but I must have done something wrong in setting a network name and password because I kept getting an error message advising me I had the wrong security key. So I called Optimum, my internet service provider. As I feared, a computer-generated voice interrogated me with multiple choice questions, none of which fit my dilemma. The closest choice to my problem was Unable to access the internet.

I chose it, and (n-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!!!!!), I found myself talking to the computer-generated help lady. Now I’d spoken to this lady before, so I knew her spiel, and that she’d be useless in helping me with my problem.

“NO, NO,” I yelled into the phone. “REPRESENTATIVE ! REPRESENTATIVE!”

On she went, asking me irrelevant questions to diagnose my problem. I pounded on the # key (ha ha pounded on the pound key) Someone once told me that pounding on the # key could get you to a real live person. It didn’t. As soon as I let up on the pounding, she kept asking me questions

“REPRESENTATIVE!!!!! REPRESENTATIVE!!!!!!!”

#### ####

I know it was a delusion, but I imagined someone, there in the background, would actually hear me. So I yelled louder and pounded harder

Finally I got a different voice, a male – not a real one, but at least it wasn’t her!

“Please hold, we are transferring your call to an agent,” “he” told me

Agent, I noted, I should have yelled AGENT!!!!!!

Finally a very patient, real, flesh and blood, young man, er agent, (real, as in flesh and blood) came on, set my network name and password for me, and voila, I’m now effortlessly wireless and loving it.

All’s well that end well but it ‘s good that prosecutor niece J wasn’t here. I can imagine her looking at me with pity and whispering “Aunt V, they can’t hear you.”

Meta

I am trying to make sense of a world that changes daily. Blackberries,I-phones, I-pads, Bluetooths. No, blueteeth, that sounds better. And there's the rub, you see? For me, it's the words, not the things. Words are to describe moments of our lives, and that's it. That's what I'm all about. Unplugging and taking my time to experience everyday life so I can put it to words